I've thought about this for a while since I published a romance web comic back in January 2016 when romance wasn't all over webtoon and had decent success till they started the recommendation thing and buried my comic to dust. I don't think I've been that bitter about it since I myself think that the comic itself needed improvement and finished that comic by 2017.
I've seen comics I started with and newer comics go big but still not get featured and wondered if webtoon actually keeps them at discover. That way, featured comic readers will be enticed to view popular discover comics and in turn read more discover comics and keep them on site...basically having poster childs for the discover platform.
Also recruiting big names to the platform has been around for a while and I in turn don't think it's a middle finger to other creators since featuring discover creators and named creators always go hand in hand. Tbh, the actual middle finger webtoon pulls is favoritism with newer works but its been like that ever since so yeah, life is just unfair.